Hamid Karzai demands US hand over gunmen who killed children

(LONDON TIMES) — President Karzai’s security chiefs have demanded that America should hand over the gunmen behind a night raid in eastern Afghanistan that government investigators and the United Nations say killed at least eight schoolchildren.

It was the Afghan Government’s most aggressive response yet to an alleged attack on civilians. But the US insisted that its men had come under fire and that all the victims were part of an Afghan cell manufacturing bombs.

Conventional US units told investigators that they had no knowledge of the operation, in Narang district in eastern Kunar province. Assadullah Wafa, who led the investigation, said that US troops flew to Kunar from Kabul late on Saturday. NATO sources said that the foreigners involved were non-military, suggesting that they were part of a secret paramilitary unit based in the capital.